The PlayStation 5 Pro's Game Boost feature, designed to enhance performance in unpatched games, is reportedly underperforming. According to Digital Foundry, the feature is currently delivering only a 30-35% improvement, falling short of the advertised 45%.
Memory bandwidth constraints are suspected to be the bottleneck, similar to what was observed with the PlayStation 4 Pro. While the PS4 Pro had a 45% GPU upgrade over the base PS4, memory bandwidth only saw a 28% improvement. This imbalance limited performance, especially at higher resolutions.
The hypothesis of memory bandwidth limitations on the PS5 Pro is supported by AMD's GPU design philosophy, which typically pairs increased compute units (CUs) with proportional increases in memory bandwidth and improved memory controllers. This allows GPUs with larger caches to handle higher resolutions like 4K more effectively.
As a result, the PS5 Pro might excel at 1080p/120 FPS but struggle at higher resolutions, as increased resolution demands more memory bandwidth.
Despite the underperformance in unpatched games, the PS5 Pro reportedly delivers substantial improvements in games with dedicated PS5 Pro patches, such as God of War Ragnarok and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
